


love/domination

by heixicanadragon



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: Gen, astrid hofferson the chief of berk, subvert all the gender tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the future after the first movie. Written in 2012. Astrid is Chief of Berk and Hiccup...</p>
            </blockquote>





	love/domination

"Hiccup!"

Her yell filled his ears. He looked up and around, startled out of his concentrated efforts to break the lock off the galley’s trap door, and saw her leaping toward him, grave determination and blood smears on her face, and in another direction perpendicular to her trajectory, a hurtling spear rippling through the air at his head.

Hiccup suddenly felt as wooden and heavy as his prothesis.  
Her body slammed him out of his paralysis, HARD, and they hit the deck, her arms effortlessly enfolding him against her as she rolled away with the momentum of her charge. He found himself on his back blinking into Astrid’s battle-bloodied, bright-eyed grin—the one that simultaneously scared him shitless and turned him inside out. She cursorily inspected his shoulders and neck, and then zeroed in on his face. Brushing aside his bangs, Astrid ran her fingers lightly near what Hiccup foggily remembered was a sword graze.

"…Thanks for… the save…" he spluttered.

"We’ll get that looked at." Her brows were knitting in a protective fierceness that could only mean a lot of action later. For their enemies… and for them.

Hiccup gulped. “—after the battle?…” He whined, for her to stop fussing over him, for her to stay with him, for her to protect herself, for her to get off of him because really, this isn’t the time for this…

She smirked at him, catching all those meanings and more with a lift of her eyebrows, but nodded. “Ok. We’ll make sure that baby face stays cute for the kids.” She patted his cheek and shifted up on her hand from her straddle, and immediately snapped from Hiccup-focus to battle-focus, charging toward the pirate that was hefting her axe experimentally.

Hiccup wobbled to his feet, his eyes still glued to her as she kicked the offending axe-thief down to the slippery deck and snatched her weapon from his flailing hand. She turned and jerked her chin up at Hiccup, a reminder that he should hit the sky with Toothless for aerial cleanup, when another pirate brought down a cutlass upon her neck.

His heart stopped and fluttered and then hammered a staccato beat as she blocked the blow and swung her axe into the attacker’s skull. “Thank Thor I sharpened and rebalanced that for her before we left,” he muttered as he stumbled back and turned, his left leg clunking against the deck, his stomach twisting.

~~

Several hours after the battle, the Viking crew had finally finished exploring and pillaging the attack ship—a strange vessel with three levels and no oar system—and it was on its way to the bottom of the sea, burning an acrid smoke into the evening sky from the pitch coating its timbers and the pile of bodies on its deck. Astrid sat in the stern of her ship, wiping herself of any remaining blood with a rag dipped in sea water, when the familiar beat of wings and rock of the boat announced Hiccup and Toothless’ return. She looked up and saw the slouching redhead’s smoke-darkened form in relief against the black dragon’s side. 

He was staring at her with that hungry look that he usually gave her after a battle, desperate and shaken, but mixed with a somberness that she rarely saw from him. She asked by a tilt of her head if they’d found any more ships in range. He frowned a bit more in answer.

She stood and announced, “Our take from that wretched pirate vessel is enough for this trip. Go home. You should have a smooth and boring journey back, Frejya willing.”

Cheers and shouts rang out, along with a chorus of “Yes, Chief,” and some scattered “Go with Odin“‘s. 

Hiccup was already astride Toothless, who looked just as weary and just as ready to leave. She swung up behind him, more heavily than in her youth but more gracefully with years of practice, and they were off.

It took about a half hour for Hiccup to come out with it. Astrid could feel his tension all through his shoulders and back, and in the way he jabbered intermittently about things they had seen on their scouting trip after the battle.

"I was thinking."

She squeezed her arms tighter in response.

"I-I was. Really scared. Today. In the battle, I mean."

"Hmm?" Astrid lifted her head from his neck, where she had been alternating between resting her head on his right shoulder and nuzzling his jaw.

Toothless swooped higher into a cloud bank, soaking them with a slap of cold, wet air, and then soaring above it. The night sky was as busy as ever with stars, the moon just a sliver.

"You saved me. And. And you almost died."

She sat up a little. Here it was. ”Hiccup, we’re in battles all the time. Almost every trip. I save you. You save me.”

"Y-yeah but this time it was close. Really close." He sounded a little choked.

"What? That spear? Yeah, it was close."

"And… that… your head almost got chopped off…" 

"But it didn’t."

A pause stretched, uncomfortable but familiar.

He swallowed, his body shuddering against hers. “Can I trust you to not get killed every time?”

She couldn’t answer that, not in the way she knew he probably wanted. He couldn’t help worrying about her, just like she couldn’t help keeping a hyper-aware eye on him in battle. She brought her left hand to his face and turned his head toward her. He had already half-lidded his eyes in anticipation as she kissed him with every assurance she couldn’t honestly give with words. His limbs began fluttering a little at the controls, but his prosthetic leg was still automatically shifting in response to Toothless’ movements. She grinned and slipped her chilled hands tighter around him, pressing closer. The dragon knew the way home. They were alive. They could celebrate a little.

~~

Toothless’ tack was slung off into the shed without any ceremony and the dragon had slunk off to raid some fish pails and sleep while Astrid continued to devour Hiccup’s face with a ferocity he really couldn’t remember…

But she was all he could remember. All he wanted.

He remembered her punches with every shove, every press of her solidity against him.

He felt every muscle and scar along her back, remembering when they had tentatively made out behind the Great Hall as kids and she had been as spindly as a pole and almost as stiff, remembering as he grew bit by bit a little taller and slightly broader and she grew as stately as an oak that they had melded together more and more. 

He could taste her determination, her care of him, her watchfulness, her protectiveness in her mouth as she murmured against his gasping lips. When had she not had her eye on him, she breathed into him, and he remembered that, yes, she had always been watching, even when she had looked on in fury or in sadness, and he could not help but thrill as he yielded to that fierce attention.

He, in the space filling the rush of concentration, sensed the weakness of his limbs, the softness of her flesh against his, the gaze she poured on him, into him, and could not help remembering that they had never found anything like this that could compare. He remembered that fateful day when he had kidnapped her on his dragon and she had seen what he saw, and his destiny had changed as she began to hug him and talk to him and plan with him and be with him

and

being

with

her

was

everything.

She fell asleep and he could only examine her for new places that would become scars, not only because she wouldn’t let him fuss over her mortality in front of her, but because he needed to look at her and remember who she was, that he belonged to this chief, this warrior, this dragon-rider, this Viking. This fierce being dominated him in a way he dared not sketch out or quantify,

separate from his bond with his dragon,

but undergirding him and Toothless

protecting him (and by extension Toothless)

loving him and Toothless…

what else would he rather do but yield, loving her back?


End file.
